


I Knew the Truth When it Came

by MajorEnglishEsquire



Series: Come Home; Unfold [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Biting, Fallen Lucifer, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Season/Series 09, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-05
Updated: 2014-02-05
Packaged: 2018-01-11 05:49:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1169433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MajorEnglishEsquire/pseuds/MajorEnglishEsquire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Follows <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1010267">Come Home; Unfold</a>. Sam and Lucifer stay on the road hunting and recovering (and <i>hunting</i> and <i>recovering</i>).</p><p>Takes place in Season 09, pre-Gadreel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Knew the Truth When it Came

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow-up to [Come Home; Unfold](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1010267). I stopped and started writing this several times because there's not a single thread of it that can be traced back to canon at this point in Season 09, but then I was like, HELLO, it's also a fic where Lucifer comes back so, why the fuck not, right?
> 
> No Gadreel in this fic's timeline, and I actually wrote the majority of this before the Garth-centric episode [Sharp Teeth](http://supernaturalwiki.com/index.php?title=9.12_Sharp_Teeth). So that was weird, too. You'll see what I mean.
> 
> I do not own the rights to these characters, setting, show, etc. No harm is intended.

When Sam wakes up, he is alone, and very much _in pain_.

It's like a dream. It's like the whole thing was a fucking dream. The bed is empty where he thought Lucifer had been.

The table. There's no blade sitting there. The food wrappers have gone. Everything. Everything that was out of place is back again.

Almost like he's starting the day over. Except for the pain.

The date. He has to check the date.

His phone is face-down on the table in the kitchenette. When he shifts out of bed, carefully, trying not to jostle his body too much, his insides scream anyway. His muscles have been rent, his gut churns.

He steadies himself and gets to the table as fast as he can, reaching out for anything. The wall, the lamp, the counter.

Once he has the phone in hand, the bed seems like a better place to collapse than the chair or the floor.

He gets back to the mattress and falls on top of the sheets. His phone drops out of his hand and lands next to him as he clutches his sides. He rubs his hands there until they're only aching instead of shooting with pain.

His breathing is so labored from the effort he might have to consider dialing 911. Like, for himself. Like, _for real_.

When he's calmed and squirmed into a position where he won't have to move much, he takes up the phone again. It needs a charge; there's not much juice left.

And the date is three days later.

So time _has_ actually passed. He's got that, at least.

There are 34 text messages from Dean. More quiz questions. The later ones are interspersed with demands for a response, then assurances that he spoke with Ezekiel, then more demands.

The latest are a quiz question and a threat:

 **42, -89**  
and  
 **if you dont answer in an hour im sending zeke after you again AND im pulling a tracking spell**

Sam's slow at it but he manages to reply:

 **that's the first thing dad ever texted you.**  
and  
 **i'm fine. i needed to sleep.**

Sam just sits there breathing for a while. Another text pops up.

**was it you who took out the demon nest in west va yesterday or did you take care of the delaware thing?**

Dean is fishing for his location. He doesn't know if he needs help yet, so he concedes a little.

**at least you got the right coast this time.**

Dean's reply points out that healthy people don't just "sleep" for two whole days.

Sam decides to promise this much:

**i will call you a little later ok?**

**better be before dinner,** Dean's reply reads. **taking cas to his first benihanas.**

Sam puts the phone on the nightstand without bothering to reply. First of all, that was more fishing; Dean trying to root out his time zone. Second, he's too distracted by the pain to make up a good joke about Dean taking Cas out on a date. And third, let's get real:

Dean will take his call whenever it comes.

He grabs his phone again because that's actually a good one.

Sam types, **srsly you will take my call even if you're blowing cas under the cook table during dinner.**

He can't tell if it sends before the phone battery finally dies.

Misery creeps in steady and sludge-like. A consuming despair that starts with the fact that his phone charger is tangled up in his bag somewhere. Then there's the fact he can't even see the bag from where he's lying on the bed. And _then_ there's the fact that he's all alone and in so much pain and probably about to die and he won't even be able to make that call, that one, last, desperate call. His last communication in the world was a blowjob joke to his brother who, as a result, will probably not only reject the good-natured premise of it, but will likely completely alienate Cas because of its connection to Sam's death.

And he tumbles straight down from there.

The pressure on his insides is so tight and awful that moaning, actual _moaning_ helps ease some of the pain, helps him ride through it. He's crying. Crying loud and messy into the sheets because he can't even crawl as far as the pillow.

He sees something. He has to blink, blink the tears back and try to wipe them away a little and he sees... the trash can. Across the room. With the wrappers and things in it. From what he'd eaten. From what Lucifer had bought him. He'd definitely, _absolutely_ not bought those for himself. He couldn't... _remember_ buying them for himself.

But his stomach is so empty now. Empty and turning over like it wants to eat itself. So profoundly empty the pain makes him want to toss his insides outside.

He sobs from the pain because he can't help it. And the front door whirs with the sound of the electronic keycard.

Before he can even worry about it being a maid or the motel staff, Lucifer steps in, carefully locking the door behind himself.

Sam gasps, loud, the spit in his mouth messy as the relief falls out of him as easily as the tears had.

"Oh fuck," he sobs again, buries his face in the sheets.

"Sam. Sam," Lucifer's hands are on him, pushing him back, physically shifting him on the bed so he can climb on, kneeling.

"I thought you wouldn't be awake. I'm here. I'm _here_ , Sam. Here, feel this. Feel this," Lucifer cradles Sam's face in one palm and clutches Sam's hand in his other.

The descent from the height of pain, from curling in on his side in agony, to the post-pain, the withered feeling, the lasting ache-- the descent is beautiful. And he's exhausted.

When he's calmed down considerably, Lucifer slides down next to him and draws him in. This time, both hands go around him and up under his t-shirt, pressing firm to the expanse of his back.

His wet face with spit and tears presses into Lucifer's shoulder and he knows nothing else in the world than how he's being held.

It occurs to him that Lucifer cares what happens to him. It pulls up the memory of his words: When he'd seen an army of demons swarming into town on Sam's heels, he'd given up his search for another suitable vessel and taken the one he'd abandoned long ago. He'd put all of his energy into reanimating Nick and showed up half-way through the next day to rescue Sam.

He actually walked in and _saved him_.

Sam's so far past trying to feel disgust and hatred that simply isn't there. The will to refuse, to kick and scream and _make a statement_ about how wrong it all is -- that's there. It's right there in front of him. It's human decency and it's rage at having been born into something so much bigger and uglier than he ever could have expected. But it's not as if Lucifer would have picked someone so fucking _fussy_ to occupy. And he came anyway. Long past the point of Sam's use to him.

Holy shit does he ever _give in_ in that moment. Uncurls the knots of his hands and brings them up to grip in Lucifer's shirts, to keep them pressed together, to absorb this light and healing.

"I hadn't meant to be gone so long. I had to take your wallet and pay the manger to leave us alone. The room... I just went to give it to him. And I heard demons nearby. Approaching. I had to put them down. I had to get rid of them. You need more time here, just a while. You weren't this bad when I left," he concludes uncertainly.

"I donno," Sam mumbles, already wanting to sleep again. "I thought-- I thought you were gone. Just gone. And I found my phone and it. I thought. It seemed like there was nothing. I thought for sure I was just gonna. Just die. Just let it happen."

Lucifer doesn't know to pat him on the back or rub his hands around and comfort Sam. He only knows to give him the relief of the touch itself. To hold on tight and glow healing into him. But little by little, it seems his fingers tighten. Dig. Sam's hands between them get edged out and fall away as Lucifer wraps him tighter, brings them to lie flush.

Sam feels so much better. Like a drug hit his system and just _lifted_ everything.

He sighs into Lucifer's skin, at his throat.

"Hey. Is it. Lu-Lucifer. Could you wake me up in just a couple hours? I wanna call Dean."

"In two hours. You want to be woken up," he seeks to clarify.

"Yeah," Sam melts. He just doesn't know anything after that.

«»

Sam feels a lot better when Lucifer wakes him. His face is a little tacky and he feels like he should be embarrassed at his display, at his pitiful misery earlier. But Lucifer simply doesn't look at him like that. It doesn't seem to occur to him to be weird about the situation.

But it _is_ the fallen archangel Lucifer waking him up from a fucking _nap_. So, like, maybe weird doesn't even exist for them anymore.

Lucifer helps draw him out of the bed and over to his bags to find his charger. When the phone is plugged into the wall, they sit on the corner of the bed and Lucifer holds his hand and arm, keeps his grip, while Sam calls Dean. To complete the pathetic scene, he simply dips his head to rest against Lucifer's shoulder, which he allows without blinking.

Dean answers with, "You didn't see my texts."

"Phone died right after--"

"Yeah we're not talking about that text. My texts after _that_ text told you not to fucking bother calling me because I have officially disowned you."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Is this it?" Sam asks, "Am I interrupting your date _right now_? Did Cas dress up for you? Is it a putting-out kinda look or did his dad threaten you when you pulled up with your dangerous-looking car in your greaser jacket and the cigarette behind your ear--"

"Feeling better, then. Okay. I guess I really _don't_ have to worry about you."

" _I'm_ worried about _you_. I'm worried you'll never touch a boob with your table manners. Maybe Cas will let you put your hand on his knee when the chef sets the onion volcano on fire."

"Nevermind, Sam. Please hunt on your own for the rest of your life."

"I'm leaving the east coast, okay? Lotta demons out here. I'm fine. I'll be fine, alright?"

"Yeah, I know. Just. Keep your phone charged, dude. Answer me. I gotta know."

"I know. Look. If. Dean, if it gets to be too long, too many days? Then, yeah, send Zeke to find out where I've gone. I can't be mad at you for that."

"I know you don't want him in your head."

"Yeah. I also don't want you to panic. It's okay. I still need time. I'm not pissed. I just gotta breathe," and the sigh he heaves rocks him against Lucifer a little. He tightens their hands.

"We're okay," Dean says, straight and steady, not a question at all, but totally a question.

"Yeah, Dean. Alright?"

"You, uh. You'll call again. Right?"

"I will. Dean. Let Cas keep you company, okay?"

"I am," Dean says, sort of petulant.

"Be nice. Go easy on him. I worry about you, you worry about me, he worries about yo--"

"I'm hanging up now."

"Yeah. I'll talk to you later," Sam says, firm.

"Yeah, Sammy. Later."

Sam's the one who hangs up first. They sit for a minute in the quiet.

"So Castiel is still with you," Lucifer confirms.

"He's good," Sam says. "He's family."

"He fits, I'm sure," Lucifer says in a way that seems like it might have had this little edge of insult.

"I forgot. The last time you saw him--"

"I knew he was alive, though. I could hear things. I had heard he'd come back. That there was... strife. He was in the middle of a battle of some kind."

Sam doesn't say that 'slaughter' might be more accurate. No need to have the majority of angel kind, _plus Satan_ , pissed at Cas.

"Long story," is all he offers, lamely.

Lucifer's head tilts to the side. Sam can feel the movement in his shoulder.

"You've said that more than once," Lucifer points out.

"They are long stories. Whole fucking lifetimes." He notices his own hand has drifted to his stomach. He really needs food. The clutch of hunger has started to make itself known even through the pleasant dull of Lucifer's hands healing him.

Sam decides to try to get used to walking. He's wobbly. It's tough. He clings to Lucifer and walks around until all they hold of each other is one hand.

He thinks about it for a while and it really is time to throw on a clean shirt, splash some water on his face, maybe go out and get real food. The fact that he'll be clinging to Lucifer, or Lucifer to him, is simply the kind of mild embarrassment he'll have to put up with in order to get a full plate of protein and carbs. Something to fill him and calm his stomach.

When Sam announces his intentions, Lucifer is quiet. He helps Sam walk back over to his bag and watches him dig through for fresh shirts. They let go for a few moments during which Lucifer just sits back and watches him. His stare is intense; Sam feels his eyes, looks back to meet them.

"I have no idea what I'm doing," Lucifer informs him. "Not really." He crouches forward into Sam's space and places a hand on his back. It's the kind of thing where he's just had his head kicked in so many times that pain comes on a delay, or maybe his brain is so used to it, only the most intense pain really bothers him. So his deterioration by the end of the trials would have had an average human laid up in the hospital for weeks. When Lucifer's hand touches down, just that edge of pain slides off, even with the contact through the fabric of the shirt he still wears. "Weren't you going to change?" Lucifer asks.

"Huh?" he remembers as he's saying it. "Right," and stands to go toward the bathroom. That one warm hand slides from his back and Lucifer stands with him. "Um, so. Did I have any cash left after you paid the front desk?"

Sam's in front of the bathroom mirror washing his face. Lucifer drifts into his vision behind him.

"I gave him one of the cards."

Ouch. A couple of those were nearly maxed and he'd been using at least one of them for three months. It was probably flagged by now.

"The red one," Lucifer offers.

Right. That one wasn't old at least but it was right at the limit. The manager would probably want another card if he came knocking again.

Sam shakes himself, goes about the business of cleaning up and getting ready to leave. He's lucky that Lucifer didn't just cut the manager down when he came knocking for more money. They can deal with everything else.

Around the corner of the block there are a couple places to eat. It's late for lunch and early for dinner so he's not too worried about cramming Lucifer into a tiny restaurant brimming with humanity. It won't be too crowded yet.

There's a deli that's as good as anything. An older couple is in front of them when they enter. The pain isn't quite edging back in yet but Sam can feel every step. The bullet graze on his face is throbbing. He decides he can handle whatever reaction comes of it if anyone notices, so Sam puts his hand out behind him and turns to seek Lucifer.

Lucifer meets him and takes Sam's left hand in both of his. He curls his hands around Sam's blindly, instead casting a carefully assessing eye on every human within range. Probably reading their souls as if they were written out on paper. The old couple has a long, involved order. By the time they're done, it looks like he's done inspecting everyone and he's now eyeing the tall racks of bright potato chip bags.

"Hey," Sam tugs at their hands. "You want anything?"

"No," he moves on to taking in the colorful chalk menu boards.

Sam orders, shakes their hands apart to pull out his wallet, pay, grab an iced tea. Lucifer moves past him to pick a corner table, away from the few other patrons, near the back door to the kitchen.

Sam takes the chair across the table from him and while they wait for his food, he watches Lucifer's eyes repeatedly track back to the dessert cases. Sam sits sideways on the chair and rests back against the wall. "You sure you don't," he points at the cake slices cookies.

"I don't want food."

"But are you sure you don't need it now? Now that you're," Sam tries for a sort of open-palm falling gesture.

"No," he says. Which Sam supposes could be taken a few ways. Lucifer doesn't say anything more, though he reaches over and pushes up Sam's sleeve and grips his wrist. Sam feels stiffness melt out of his spine, soaks it in. He looks down at where they're touching. It doesn't glow right now, though sometimes it does. He's sitting still there, watching Lucifer's hand, when a runner comes out with his food.

Before they leave, Sam takes another small hit of a touch off of Lucifer as he finishes his drink. Then he heads for the counter again. He gets two big cookies in a paper pouch.

He eats a half a cookie, slowly, on the walk back to the motel. Lucifer watches this action more than he watches the people and passing cars this time. When he hands over the crinkly paper, chocolate sticking to the sides and cooling inside, Lucifer doesn't deny himself.

Sam hangs out on the edge of the bed watching him eat. Or _savor_ , more like. He doesn't make a sound, just sits in the kitchenette chair and seems to absorb the cookie with half-lidded eyes. He offers the other half of Sam's cookie back to him but he waves him off.

The way he'd eyed the sweets and the bright wrappers, Sam knew better than Lucifer did what he'd wanted. Privately, he thinks this is something he has in common with his brother, with Gabriel, whom he had, presumably, killed.

Sam had seen, Sam had watched. He'd seen the ritual which had granted Death himself a vessel. It had required the sacrifice of an entire town. Ellen and Jo had died in that town. In ramping up his charge to the prize fight, Lucifer had other towns flooded, had storms thrown at cities, had unleashed viruses and violence and demons and aimed to kill hunters and everything they protected.

The vision that had harassed him after the wall in his head broke down was not this same being.

 _This_ being, sucking melted chocolate off the side of his thumb, is not that same being.

It's not as hard for Sam to process as he'd like. Sympathy for the devil?

Sam sighs. Yeah, actually.

Dean and him. Sam and his brother. They've done their fare share of monstering. They've been, quite justly, hunted down by others themselves. Everyone has their own vision of the way the world ought to work.

He thinks if he'd been in his right mind when Dean had become a vampire.  
If he'd been unable to change him back. Or if Dean had fed and the change had become permanent.

He _knows_ what he would have done.

The two of them would have stayed on the road. The only thing that would have changed was when they did their investigating. Nighttime all the time. A few less stops at greasy spoon diners.

Their species wouldn't change what they were. Are.

Michael and Lucifer. They were doing what they thought was right, too.

It's bad, yeah. They're all just different, individual brands of horrible.

But Lucifer and Sam have shared a skull. Lucifer did more than take the gag off when they conversed. Sam saw the world through the filter of Lucifer's very grace, his being, his mind essentially -- whatever made him, him.

Sam knows how to lie. He can deny anything and make anyone believe it.

Lying to himself, though, is something he reserves for periods of extended hallucination with the intent of preserving his own sanity. And not even that worked out really well.

They're not on the same wavelength and Sam still doesn't believe they were meant for each other or something; they weren't made for one another specifically, but they _get it_. They do. They've seen through each others' eyes.

He hunches in on himself a little to roll with the bolts of pain that are starting to flash through his abdomen and up to his chest. Finally he asks, "Can you go wash your hands?" because he doesn't need the devil dragging cookie crumbs over his skin or getting chocolate in the sheets.

When Lucifer comes back, Sam's curled up into his own knees. He gets dragged back to a sit against the headboard and Lucifer links their arms and suddenly produces the laptop, deposits it atop Sam's thighs as the pain tapers off.

"Research," he says by way of explanation as he rubs heat into Sam's hand.

"Sure, um," Sam sighs, easing into the relief again. "Where do you think we start?"

Lucifer settles more firmly against the pillows behind him, presses solid into Sam's side. Sam sags below him a little from where he's sitting, so when Lucifer's eyes fall down on him next, they're patient and unwavering. "To know that, you'd have to tell me everything. All those 'long stories' you've been alluding to."

He needs to know how the angels fell. To understand how the angels fell, he has to understand that the tablets are involved. But how far back from then? Does Castiel's role in the fall have enough to do with Purgatory that Sam has to reveal all of that, as well?

Sam needs time. He has to suss out his tactics here. How much should he reveal about Crowley because how much more can Crowley really be of use? How does he avoid bringing Kevin's name into it? How does he reserve things, protect people? Just in case Lucifer's agreement with Sam to pursue Abbadon and restore the angels isn't on the level.

 _I will never lie to you_.

The truth was always horrible enough. Lucifer didn't lie to him. He never bothered to lie. Demons lie. Lucifer has no use for lies.

Sam takes in a deep breath. As he exhales, he prepares to tell the whole truth.

«»

They hang around for two more days. There are brief trips outside the room for food, but each time Sam sees daylight, he feels more equal to being there. He can step out of Lucifer's reach for longer. He's stronger, healthier. The pain no longer yo-yos around, coming back in different intensities at random.

Lucifer looks better, too. What was left of Nick's old injuries had not been easy to see when Lucifer first showed up, but the skin was still unnaturally white and haggard, the hair gray and the bones too close to the skin.

It's not just the cookies and chips and pudding cups Sam keeps slipping to Lucifer during his meals. He has filled back out and looks like every other average, healthy human. They're similar enough in size that Lucifer changes his clothes, too, borrows some of Sam's. Looks fresh and new each day.

With the revelation of how Sam got himself so ripped apart inside, Lucifer was able to adjust how he healed Sam. It wasn't anything he could explain without sounding like a textbook, but knowing the source of the internal damage had helped Lucifer counter it. Sam will be feeling completely normal soon.

So it's time to set out.

Lucifer prioritizes angels above demons and Sam prioritizes the demon threat to humanity over the angels. Aside from squabbling with each other, not knowing how to navigate everyday life, and accidentally encountering hunters, the angels aren't in all that much danger. So Sam feels like they have to work to take down Abaddon first.

Lucifer doesn't scoff or take Sam's opinion lightly. He worries for his brothers and sisters and thinks Abaddon will be simple to obliterate.

Sam knows he's stepped out the past two nights to handle more demons, though. Sam will wake to the cool sheets beside him and the deep promise of an ache to come if Lucifer isn't back in contact with him soon. And Lucifer will step back into the room as quietly as he can, adding another blood-flecked shirt to the growing pile of laundry that Sam's gonna have to handle soon.

The angels are thousands of years old. They can handle being human. Dean and Cas and Kevin are on that case. Sam tries to convince Lucifer that they need to go after Abaddon.

"After all," Sam points out, packing dirty laundry separate from the last of the clean, "if you think it's so easy to take her down, then fine: Let's swat her out of the way and then take care of the angels."

Lucifer only tilts his head and narrows his eyes. Then he comes to sit on the bed, next to the bag. He grabs Sam's wrist and shakes loose his hold on the duffle zipper to glow light into his hand for a moment. Sam watches. It's bright this time, humming.

"You could handle going up against angels right now," Lucifer says. "The demons are utilizing firearms and tactical units. I don't know that you're better enough-- if I can hold you together through that," he finally meets Sam's eyes.

"Okay. That's fine. We've got the travel time and the time it takes to do research. Probably some interviews. There's always some podunk small-town local LEO taking evidence and bystander reports when they have no idea what to do with it. So I'll be fine by the time we go up against any demons. And I'll have you there."

Sam considers him for a moment.

"Speaking of which. We're gonna need to get you a suit or two."

"For?"

"Interviews. Getting into police stations. We're gonna need to get you a fake ID."

Lucifer doesn't look sour about it or anything, just a little doubtful.

"Or I could go do that part myself," Sam offers, which gets him an immediate head-shake.

"No. I'll go with you."

Lucifer acquiesces to being manhandled into suit jackets and ties by Sam at the department store but not to being fitted by an actual tailor. The same goes for his hair. It's a little frayed and riotous and when Sam mentions it, he instantly agrees to get it cut.

If Sam does it.

Lucifer doesn't like doors being opened for him. Doesn't like standing in line with people to get food, so he won't do it unless Sam needs to be touching him. When Sam buys him a soda, he'll refuse refills unless he can do it himself. He keeps all human contact to a minimum unless Sam _asks_ him to be there.

Eventually, interviews go like that, too. The first place they have to hit up in Tennessee is an office building. The intern they speak with is clearly attracted to Lucifer but gets over that quickly after he starts rolling his eyes at her simpering. It serves them well, though. She hurries up and passes them on to her boss, the witness they need to speak with, as fast as she possibly can.

When Ms. Sayers starts talking to them about where her brother serves in the Army reserves and the last time she saw him, Lucifer rolls his eyes once more and just spins to walk away.

"Ah-uh. Sorry, hold on," Sam asks her to pause and turns after him. "We'll be back, just one second--Lu-- _Agent_. Uh. Hey, wait!"

Lucifer stops by the elevators and presses the button to call one. "She's lying. This is useless."

"What do you mean she's lying? What does she even have to lie about? You wanna at least, I donno, give her a damn _chance_?"

Lucifer's eyes snap back to his. "No." He looks over Sam's shoulder and says directly to her. "You're a liar. And we're gonna find your brother dead because you're too busy protecting your petty little shit."

Sam is struck speechless for a second before he puts on his game face and turns.

"If you _are_ lying, that's also obstruction of justice. So you better hope we don't find him dead because you'll be in jail pending charges. You won't be able to attend the funeral."

Sam has no idea how Lucifer knew the woman was lying, but she was. She hadn't seen her brother in weeks. They'd had a fight. He was extremely upset. She'd taken a stand and hadn't apologized, had only riled him further. Unknowingly opening him up wide for the possibility of demonic possession.

So her info was dated and of very little use to them, other than directing them to her Instagram for a picture of the victim.

Lucifer, or Special Agent Faust, as Sam is so fond of calling him in public, makes investigations go a lot faster. His intolerance for bullshit and lies leads them to demons quickly. The only lulls in progress come when they're waiting for new carnage or omens to show up. Most demons recognize him at once and few fight or have the time to flee. Most submit to the fist he punches down their throats or bursts their chests open with, the black smoke turning to gray-brown ooze, boiling, and simmering to nothing underneath their corpses.

Sam's body recovers even faster because he hardly has to do work. It's the other monsters that don't recognize Nick's face or Lucifer's power that require Sam to actually risk his unstable health.

Of course, when Sam needs Lucifer after, he's there. He will sit still for hours healing Sam with touch. He never lets Sam's health backslide too far.

But soon he ventures out to do small things on his own. He will buy food and bring it back to the room, or go buy new shoes and things by himself. Lucifer is completely capable of doing so; he can perfectly navigate the world, only he'd much prefer Sam as a buffer between himself and the rest of humanity.

He asks questions, little by little, gaining insight into not only how Sam operates alone or with his brother, but he also carefully probes into what Sam felt like for all that time he hallucinated that Lucifer was plaguing him.

It's after asking these questions that he first asks for a separate motel room, 'round about Idaho. Sam agrees, but Lucifer basically only leaves Sam's room when he's settling down to go to sleep for the night.

It's a wonder to Sam that Lucifer can stand him for so long, but when he mentions it, Lucifer actually laughs at him.

"You are my equal," he says when he's sobered, with complete gravity, in all seriousness. "You overtook me, Sam. Enforced the divide between where you knew you belonged and where I wanted to be. You silenced me and you stepped into the cage and you brought my brother down with us. You are my equal," he repeats. "And now that I have it, I value your company. Especially here. On this plane of existence and in a time when I have less power than I've ever had." He shrugs, "Besides, of course, when you contained me within yourself. Besides the time when _you_ made me powerless. No easy feat."

Making him powerless, then -- negating him -- had been the key to earning his trust and respect.

And he never fails to act like it. While other humans earn disdain or are completely overlooked, Sam always has Lucifer's attention, his backup, and his help when he needs it.

Sam tries to extend that back, to make the best of a situation that he imagines could easily go bad if he gave Lucifer one inch of space to think less of him. So he even says something when he doubts Lucifer's motivations or feels like he could be working more on gaining ground against Metatron than Abaddon.

Lucifer always comes clean, but after a while, really ramps up his protest against searching exclusively for Abaddon. Things get a little tense and Lucifer spends more of his time in his own motel room so that he can work on angel things instead of petty, pathetic demons.

For the sake of peace between them, Sam lets him pull away, encourages him to do more on his own, to spend time without Sam.

The walls shake a little when doors open and shut in this motel. After a little while, curiosity gets the better of him and he looks out the peep hole to see Lucifer standing outside, weight shifting from foot to foot, crossing and uncrossing his arms, going back into his room and leaving it again. Restless.

Rarely does his temper grow short with Sam but today he seemed relieved to be handed a key to his own room just to get away from Sam and from bumbling humanity. To take shelter within himself.

It's been getting worse over the past few days.

Sam watches him disappear back into his room. He steps away from the door, makes himself a cup of coffee, then the wall shudders again. Sam leans to peek out the curtain, then heads to the door again. Lucifer is now pacing slowly out on the walkway.

Sam puts his mug down and unlocks the door. He doesn't step out; he steps aside, motioning for Lucifer to come in.

Lucifer looks side to side like he expects someone else to be in the room with Sam. Then he comes inside and lets Sam close the door behind him.

"I'm starting to think you're gonna rattle right out of your vessel."

Lucifer's eyeroll is overblown and dramatic. He crosses his arms over his chest.

Sam moves around him, retrieves another mug, pours a second coffee, dumps sugar in it, and offers it over.

Lucifer's jaw flexes and his eyes track the cup. He wants it but he doesn't want to take it.

Sam thinks he doesn't want to admit to wanting or needing something.

When his eyes track Sam's hands even after he puts the mug back down, Sam knows he's right. He was just wrong about what it was Lucifer wanted.

His behavior isn't making Sam feel generous, though.

"You can _ask_ , you know."

He doesn't look away or roll his eyes again. His eyes meet Sam's and press a challenge.

Really?

Either Lucifer doubts the offer or doubts that Sam knows what he's even talking about.

"Alright," he only pauses for the briefest of seconds, "Would you put your hands on me?"

Sam looks him over, carefully. His sense of humor runs a lot blacker than his taste in coffee. This could be anything.

"Why?" he asks after a minute.

A breath gusts out of Lucifer, he rolls his eyes again, drops his hands, and turns on his heel for the door.

"Okay," Sam blurts.

Lucifer stops exactly where he is, one hand on the wall, the other already turning the doorknob. He stays there, looking only at the slice of light between the door and the jamb.

Sam approaches slowly and reaches for his arm, gently pulls Lucifer's hand away from the door with both of his. His fingers are light on Lucifer's skin but he moves into the touch like Sam has grabbed him and is yanking him around.

Sam pulls Lucifer back and then around to face him, a hand on the inside of each of his arms, fingers still running light.

Lucifer turns his palms up and meets Sam's eyes again, asking.

So Sam lets go of him.  
He turns to the bed and sits, pushing pillows up behind him and sprawling his legs comfortably. Then when he's ready he looks up at Lucifer, ignores the little strain of anger or whatever it was emerging in his eyes, and says, "C'mon."

Lucifer's eyes trip down Sam's frame to his toes and back. But he doesn't wait very long to shake himself and round the bed, to the empty side.

He reaches down to yank his shoes off since he hasn't learned that stepping-on-the-heels thing yet (Sam's seen him try and almost busted a gut laughing). Then he climbs into the bed and Sam reaches to draw him into his arms.

Lucifer drapes over his entire left side, then folds in as Sam's arms do, around him.

He lets go a huge, shuddering breath into Sam's chest. Plants his crown right under Sam's chin and settles in.

"But you still have to answer, Lu," Sam says, his tongue tripping over the abbreviation. He decides to keep it. "You have to tell me why. You've been drilling me on all the soulless stuff and the trials and why I think I let Ezekiel in. _You_ can tell _me_ why for once."

Lucifer sighs, takes a moment, clears his throat. He reaches up and pulls Sam's hand off his shoulder to press their palms together.

Sam sees the light, the glow like when Lucifer used to heal him back at the start of all this.

"That's you. Not me. I don't have heat like that. I don't radiate that way, Sam. I pull you to the surface and it's as close as I can be without." He shakes his head. "Without you riding shotgun as my vessel."

Sam watches their hands glow for a long time, then threads his fingers between Lucifer's. "So you like how it feels," he says quietly, only sort-of a question.

Lucifer answers, stilted. "I need healing, too. I need more of it. You're alright now, but I. Wasn't quite done. And." He tucks their hands against Sam's side. "Yes, I prefer to be touching you. Just when I think it will be a relief to be alone, I end up wanting you back."

Sam thinks for a while.

"We weren't made for each other," Sam says.

Lucifer is silent.

"Not saying anything is lying by omission. See? You _do_ lie to me."

"I don't. We were made for one another, Sam. If you choose not to believe that, I don't need to change your mind. Nothing relies on it. You will help me or you won't. I think you've proven yourself my equal at manipulation." His shoulders shrug underneath Sam's other hand. "We could battle forever on right and wrong."

Sam thinks he was built for Lucifer. Not that he was made for him. He wasn't born to it, someone got their hands, their _blood_ , into him before it could be stopped. He was born human like everybody else. He was molded into what Lucifer could use.

And if that's true why doesn't he feel used right now?

Maybe he is being used. Why doesn't it bother him? Is it the warm body beside him?

But Lucifer covers over half his body where he's laying and it isn't a warm body. It's cool, if he thinks about it. And facts are that Lucifer runs cold; he said so. Sam has always run hot, always been a furnace, always been sweating and too warm to curl tight under the covers with. Except to a werewolf, who also ran hot. Except to Amelia, when they'd toughed through the winter with that shoddy heating unit.

Sam's comfortable where he is right now. He's got the devil under his palms and pressed into his chest and aside from, like, mandatory moral objections, he's got no real problem with where he is.

He, like Lucifer, can choose to be untroubled by their differences.

Sam simply breathes for a while, sometimes watching Lucifer's head rise and fall atop him.

"You bring my soul to the surface?" he muses quietly.

Lucifer makes a little noise of assent, like, _more or less_.

Then after a while: "Alright," Lucifer says. "In the interest of _complete honesty_? It finds its way to me," he admits.

So Sam closes his eyes, trying to feel that. Trying to stop himself from reaching out to heal Lucifer. But he doesn't know how to get a handle on it, how to draw it back or reign it in. Where to start.

"Your soul seeks to heal, Sam," Lucifer says against his chest. Squeezes his hand. Sinks impossibly closer.

«»

Lucifer is never exactly good-natured but he is noticeably mild the next day and the next. Calmer. Not so quick to get annoyed.

Sam finds that he has a sense of where Lucifer is. When he wanders a witness' house to look for anything demonic, Sam thinks he knows where he's gone off to. When they float around their separate motel rooms, Sam knows when Lucifer is going to come next door looking for Sam to eat dinner. He knows, without having awoken, that Lucifer went to get sugary sodas from the vending machine twice in the night.

And he knows, after five days, to reach for his hand across the center console in the car. Over the next four hours of the drive, Lucifer subtly unwinds in the passenger seat, carefully holding Sam's hand in both of his.

Sam will offer contact sometimes. If he's just working on the laptop or zoning out on some TV after a long day hunting, he'll ask if Lucifer wants to sit with him and mostly he declines, but he doesn't roll his eyes over it again. Or if Sam reaches out without asking he'll just go along with it. So Sam stops asking and starts taking.

Another road, another town, another trail to follow, another motel. And today when they step into the front office of the Diamond Inn, Lucifer touches Sam's elbow and just as suddenly pulls away. "What about one room with two beds?"

"Uh. Yeah. Yeah, we can do that if you want."

Lucifer nods and takes the car keys from Sam's hand and turns to go wait with the car.

Sam watches him go. He frowns, shakes himself, and goes to get a double for the week.

«»

What few human routines Lucifer has picked up from Sam are timed just like Sam's are. Lucifer only eats when Sam's hungry and he changes clothes at the beginning of each day. He's still powerful enough not to have to deal with issues of hygiene but he seems to like washing his face and hands a lot. He does this before settling down to watch television or read or pick up the threads of Sam's work.

He doesn't pop out all the time like Castiel used to so it feels a little strange sometimes. Normally it would be him and Dean alone in a room with the occasional victim or fellow hunter. None of the angels have wings anymore, though, and that seems to extend to Lucifer. He's used doors the entire time Sam's been with him.

Sam wonders if he gets restless or is really as content as he seems to be going at Sam's pace. He doesn't sleep. Sam has flashes of his time without a soul. He knows what that's like, the restlessness, but Lucifer doesn't go out to hunt on his own since those first few days. If demons are close by, he'll wake Sam and they'll head out together.

So Sam witnesses him now, in the close proximity of their two-bed motel room. Lucifer spends a lot of the time blinking over books, then he'll get up, wash his face, and go settle on the end of the far bed to watch television.

When he wakes up in the morning, Lucifer is on the end of Sam's bed, instead; one hand wrapped around Sam's ankle, the other tapping the tab on the top of a can of Coke.

Lucifer turns away from the muted television as if he'd heard Sam wake, though he's pretty sure he didn't make a sound.

"It's better this way," Lucifer declares, apropos of nothing.

"What way?" Sam asks, mouth feeling morning dry.

"Here together. You rest well when I'm here. I like being here."

Sam doesn't get this. "Don't humans, in general, like, as a species, drive you nuts? Lucifer, you hate us," he points out.

"I didn't mean that I like being here in the human pile, Sam," Lucifer casts a withering look down on him. "Being in your room, being together with you. There are merits to being alone and it's what I'm used to, but your company is... favorable. And I can keep the company of your soul when I'm close. It feels good," he shrugs. "So this is how I'm doing it."

"You just," Sam sweeps a hand through the air for finality, "declare this? Right here and now? Lu's way or the highway?"

Lucifer rolls his head on his neck and puts his soda between his knees to stretch his arms in front of him.

"Well. You have a say in it."

Sam takes a very short moment to decide, "I'm fine with it."

"I know. I just felt it needed to be said." With that, he rises and puts the remote and the Coke on the nightstand and turns and pushes Sam toward the side of the bed and crawls in while he's sputtering, trying to sit up.

Lucifer curls into his side and tries to grab Sam's flailing hand to tug to himself.

"I-- I was gonna. Uh. I was gonna get up."

Lucifer snags his hand and settles in on him. "Can I ask you not to?"

"Uh."

"Get more sleep, Sam. The sun only just rose."

Sam frowns but goes ahead and lets himself get tugged around. He's about to ask when Lucifer became so pushy but.

Well. This Lucifer is kind of closer to the one he expected. He's a little more free, a little more himself.

Sam realizes that he's honestly getting better. Sam's been feeling better for so long now, all Lucifer's patching healed him over completely. He just hadn't realized that Lucifer had stitched himself up, too, only he hadn't allowed himself to get better all the way. He'd been giving Sam his human space and letting him live a life without Satan in their off-hunt hours.

It makes him tug Lucifer closer. It lets his eyes dip closed once more. And the more he accepts the calm and contentment of this moment the more he can feel where they're connected.

Lucifer's hands are on his neck. Where he'd pulled Sam's hands around, Sam could keep an open connection with the bare flesh of his arms. Instead, Sam pushes the t-shirt up his back, and presses his hands there.

And he feels it even more. Like an eyebrow raise and an added buzz of contentment aimed at him through the connection; his soul pressing up into Lucifer's weakened, but still present, cool-to-the-touch grace.

He needs the time, then, to settle into this feeling, to remember that he's still attached to bones underneath his soul as it presses up into another person. He wonders if Lucifer is just that much stronger or if Sam's just found out the proper way to pay attention.

Honestly? He thinks he's found the tethers of the connection within himself. He thinks he might have been looking for it, ever since he stopped Lucifer being tetchy and restless by dragging him in with his touch.

Sam spares a thought to be concerned about it. _"M.F.E.O.,"_ he hears himself say through his own head. The moments right after Detroit that scared him most.

He's still a fucking Winchester. The taste of destiny is still motor oil on his tongue.

This wasn't meant to be, though. Not this weird teaming-up thing. Lucifer isn't even occupying him. No matter how broken he still knew he was, he never asked for Sam to let him in to heal himself faster. There's been absolutely no talk of it.

If they were made to this, that's not okay. Destiny _does not_ exist. But to approach it again, on their own terms?

Lucifer settles his cheek against the side of Sam's head and every breath comes easier than the last. He starts to wonder if he can project this ease and relief at Lucifer through his hands. If he can make him understand how he likes it here, too, without saying it.

Maybe not. Maybe that's why Lucifer had to say it first.

So, "I like it here, too," Sam says.

"Hm," is all the sound Lucifer makes. He already knew that, too. Probably just thought it needed to be said.

«»

He calls Dean while Lucifer is in the room now. That's weird.

He still gives Dean these incredibly vague updates and Dean still offers up his location every single time so Sam can come meet him if he wants.

One time Dean says, "Hey. Can I ask you something?"

"I donno, _can_ you?"

"Christ. You fuckin' brat."

"Yeah, dude," Sam smiles.

"Listen. I just wanted. Well. I mean. You know, if you're settled down again, if you're shacked up with somebody for a while. Sam. You know that's okay, right? I mean, I get it, you don't wanna tell me. The whole phone thing. With Amelia. I get it. But you-- it's okay. I mean, you know that, right?"

Sam's eyes must go wide because Lucifer's looked up from the laptop and is staring at him, his head slowly cocking to the side.

"Uh. Hold on. Hold up one second," Sam pops off the bed and grabs one of the room keys and leaves the room. Leaves that narrowing set of eyes behind.

He keeps the phone pressed to his chest while he closes the door behind him and swiftly walks to go sit in the stairwell.

"Uh," is how he greets Dean again.

"Uh-huh," Dean says. "Wow. Cas called that one, actually. Glad I didn't put money down on it. Cas would have won that bet. I thought you were the one taking on all those demons up in New England."

They haven't been near the east coast in weeks. Sam's got no idea who that could be.

"Yeah. Definitely not me."

"So, I mean, you don't have to tell me, man, but, I mean, _you can tell me_."

Sam hears what comes after that. The, 'I wanna know you're happy,' that Dean won't say outright. It's wrapped up more so it should sound like, 'at least tell me she's hot,' which Dean might actually, eventually say.

Sam stutters for a second. "Yeah. Yeah, it's, um. It's good. Dean. It's really good."

"Good, man," he can hear Dean swallow thickly over the phone. "Good."

"It's a nice change. You know. For a while. I donno how long. You know?"

"Right. Yeah. No pressure, man. I mean. It's probably best for you to take some time out right now. You know, recover all the way. You're feeling better, right?"

"Yeah," Sam settles against the bricks and breathes. "A lot better."

"Good. So, uh. Let her take care of you, you know."

It's on the tip of Sam's tongue: 'them.' He almost corrects Dean. Of course, he isn't actually settled down, he hasn't stopped hunting, so that detail is hardly relevant.

Hardly the truth.

He thinks of the truth, the fact that The Morningstar is sitting in his motel room using his laptop.

He cringes.

Dean moves on, tells him about some of the angels him and Cas have come across. Then he kind of tracks back to ask Sam not to burn all his fake IDs while he's taking the time off. He bitches about how time-consuming it is to make them. And then Cas is in the background.

"Hey, I gotta go, Sam. I--uh. Unless you wanted to talk to Cas? I gotta pull something off the stove."

"Right--I mean, yeah. Yeah, put Cas on for a second, I'll let you go. I'll talk to you later, okay?"

"Yeah, be careful out the-- well. I guess you're not _out there_."

"I will be, Dean. I'll be careful."

Dean sighs, a great gust into the mouthpiece of the phone. "Okay. Later. Here's Cas."

Sam has actually been texting Cas a lot lately. He's been keeping an eye out on Garth's last known trail. Dean doesn't want to talk about it -- he hates losing people and he's too sure that Garth is just completely gone. So Cas has taken it up in his spare time and has been leaning on Sam for some of the reference points and research.

Cas is kind of one of his best friends. So it's really great to talk to him. Though their quick exchange of information ends and turns back around to the subject of Sam and Dean's chat.

"Dean was nervous about calling you today. I'd suggested that you may have sought a place of residence in which to fully recover."

"Yeah. He asked about it and. Uh. Cas, I don't wanna get into details about it. I'm alright. And I don't know how long this will last. It's just. You know I trust you with Dean, right?"

Cas makes a soft noise of assent.

"I trust you with him completely. There's nothing better for him. I mean. I don't wanna step on your toes or anything. But you guys? Together?"

"It's. It's not _exactly_ like that, Sam."

"I know. I know, but Cas, I also know where it's going and it's alright. You guys are a team, too. I don't have to worry about him so long as he's got you watching his back. So it's all good. And just. You know, the rest of that comes with time. I think this is good. To give you guys some time, too."

On the other end, Sam can hear that Cas has retreated to another room in the bunker, hears a door squeak, maybe being shut behind him.

"Cas?"

"Thank you Sam. It's just. Dean is **frustrating**."

Sam laughs. "Ahhhaha. Ah, yeah. Welcome to the family, Cas."

"I wish I could share your amusement," he says dryly.

Sam sprawls a little more easily where he's sat on the concrete.

"Cas," he says, "you ever heard that phrase, 'the quickest way to a man's heart is through his stomach'?"

"Dean does all the cooking," Cas says in mild concern.

Sam huffs another laugh. "Yeah. You let him keep at it Cas. I mean, let him take care of you. The quickest way to Dean's heart? Cas. You're already there. Just. Don't leave him alone. I mean, I know you weren't exactly asking but--"

" _Thank you_ , Sam," Cas says, firm, almost relieved. "I understand."

It's ingrained in Cas already. They don't have to do the touchy-feely I Give You My Blessing bit. Cas is already Winchester enough to know that.

Fuck, Sam thinks.  
He misses them.

«»

Lucifer's got the door propped open with a chair when Sam gets back. He's pacing the small kitchenette and into the doorway and back around again, arms crossed over his chest.

"Does your brother need you?" he stops and asks immediately upon Sam's return.

"No. He. He, uh. He had a question."

Lucifer is blank, then nods just once and turns to close the lid of the laptop.

Sam watches him retreat into the bathroom to go wash his hands and face. He moves the chair and lets the door close behind him, then goes to plug in his phone.

When Lucifer comes back, he sits on the end of Sam's bed and folds up his legs and turns on the television. Sam is the one lying by omission now, but Lucifer doesn't press. He feels weird about that.

Sam's about to move past it, let the change in behavior be and turn to mapping out their next route. But he turns toward the table and his eyes fall on Lucifer's perfectly pristine bed, sheets untouched. If he ever lies down, it's with Sam on his bed. These few past times they've gotten one room with two beds, Lucifer has basically ignored his own except as a place to spread out road maps or a surface to separate out the laundry.

And Sam guesses they could just get one big bed instead, and then he remembers Dean and Cas and remembers all those years and years of doubles. With Dean and him filling up their distinct spaces with all their life, socks, books. Dean's bottles of Bud, Sam's cans of light beer; all the equipment for cleaning the weapons and maintaining the guns, Sam's carefully-stocked bags of herbs and little jars of blood and little satchels of bones and things.

Lucifer doesn't really know how to live, on an everyday, dawn-to-dusk, human basis. He's hanging on by a thread.

He's hanging on by clinging to Sam, doing as he does. Putting on the suits and extending his weakened senses to feel for danger. Up until recently he was containing his pain and his needs simply to stay out of Sam's way.

Sam misses his brother and he misses Castiel. He wants to go home and he also wants this to work out, this thing he's attempting with Lucifer.

If Dean sees Lucifer like this, there's no question he'll know exactly who that is, exactly what's happened. This situation would be completely unacceptable.

And at the same time, Sam still hasn't sat down and decided where the line is with Dean. He's done something unacceptable, too. What Dean did, basically accepting Ezekiel into Sam on his behalf, was a deep violation. And he's been fast to miss Dean, to want to go back to him and be in his company and for things to feel normal again. But he still hasn't decided how he can establish lines with Dean anymore. Their devotion runs too deep, it bulldozes over their personal lines. They need to grow attachments outside of one another for a while.

What Dean's got going with Cas is about to grow and flourish. Cas is being cautious with Dean, their history is a minefield. But maybe the solution here is to let that attachment with Cas really take root. Maybe Sam has to stay to the side for longer, has to stay away. And in the mean time, he can do some good. He doesn't have to lie to Dean. He can say he's returned to hunting in a while, maybe offer to meet with Dean and Cas out on a hunt one day. The problem will be leaving town without Dean on his tail.

He'll work out the details later.

What's for sure is that he'll have to keep this up for a while longer. But he's not alone. He's not on his own. He may not have his best friends in the world here, but on some level, Lucifer cares. This is okay for now. As long as Lucifer doesn't get sick of him and feed him to the enemy, that is.

Sam drops everything on the table and just leaves it.

He rounds the bed and stands in front of the television, towering over where Lucifer's perched on the edge of the bed.

Not to be out-towered, Lucifer returns his steady stare and unfolds to stand, but when his feet drop to the floor, Sam leans down and sits between them. He settles in against the bed, rests his head against the inside of Lucifer's knee.

After a few quiet, confused minutes, Lucifer offers down the tv remote. Sam flips to a movie channel. Eventually, Lucifer's hand digs into his hair, and comes to scritch lightly at the top of his head. Sam can feel the subtle heat, the glow reaching up and out of him and into Lucifer. The healing closeness.

«»

They have dinner at IHOP because Sam thinks Lucifer will appreciate having chocolate chip pancakes for dinner enough to endure the grungy humanity of the experience. When the food arrives, though, Lucifer barely even puts on a show of picking at it. Mostly he stares into his soda cup.

"Hey," Sam finally says, and pulls Lucifer's hand across the table. "Are you not feeling alright?"

Lucifer shakes him off and sits up, spine straight. "I'm fine, Sam. You don't need to do that."

"Okay. Um." Sam looks around. "If you're thinking of smiting everyone in the room we can get the food to go."

Lucifer doesn't laugh. Instead he looks out the window at the parking lot and says, "I'm anxious."

"Alright. About what?"

Lucifer motions loosely between them. "Our arrangement ending."

"Wwwwwhy?" Sam draws out, squinting at him. "Is it ending?"

His eyes flash wide and he shrugs. "I don't know, Sam. What are you going to tell your brother?"

Sam puts down his fork and scoots Lucifer's drink out of the way of his unpredictable gesticulations. "Nothing, for now," he says at last. "Dean seemed to think I'd decided to move in with somebody for a while. To recover. I let him think that. When we have a plan, when I'm ready to see him, then we'll figure it out. I donno. You've changed a lot, you know?"

"No," Lucifer shakes his head, blinks. "I know-- no, Sam, I'm asking--" he balls his fists and tucks them down into his lap. He re-starts, staccato and pointed. "I am asking what you will say to Dean about him allowing another being to inhabit you without your knowledge. I am asking where you're going to start drawing limits with him."

Sam kind of falls back in his seat as he clarifies the message. Like wow. Lucifer's still angry with Dean. Of course he wouldn't be concerned with how they'll convince Dean he's there to help. That's just a matter of time, of how long Sam stays alive and well in his presence. But Lucifer can't abide what he sees as Dean and Ezekiel's violation of Sam. He doesn't want Sam to see him again before marking out some new lines between them.

"I. I donno what I'm gonna say," he mumbles, shrugs. "I haven't decided yet. I'm not ready to do that yet."

Lucifer seems to relax minutely. "Then you're not ready to see him yet," he declares.

Sam narrows his eyes. "You don't get to tell me when I can see my brother again, Lucifer." In his anger he forgets to shorten the name for anyone who might be eavesdropping.

"I'm _not_ saying that. I'm NOT. I'm clarifying-- I'm stating, just so that it's clear for the both of us, that you're not ready to go see him. That you won't be ready until you decide where the lines are."

"He just doesn't want me to get hurt," Sam objects.

"Neither does the government, Sam, but I've been watching documentaries and I've learned a thing or two about Homeland Security and how many rights they expect you to give up for your own safety."

"Oh, holy shit, you are not watching the History Channel anymore," he says through an unexpected laugh.

Lucifer drops his eyes to his pancakes and picks up his fork. "It was on CNBC, Sam. It's a news channel," he says, a little sing-songy.

"Son of a bitch," Sam rubs at his temple and picks his fork back up. "Alright. Well, whatever. We're not dealing with it right now. We're not meeting Dean yet. We're gonna wait."

After a little while, Lucifer gives him a brief, soft smile over his plate. Nothing maniacal like the old hallucination, but just as self-assured and pleased.

Holy fuck. He is way more comfortable with this than he should be. Dean is gonna open fire on sight and Sam will have no reasonable method of convincing him not to.

Of course, if Lucifer has any say in it, at least he'll have established emotional boundaries between them by then.

What the fuck is his life? Seriously.

«»

Lucifer metabolizes all the sugar in his whip-cream-smothered pancakes whilst brainstorming righteously over some new plan to find Abaddon. He buries himself in books and hides behind his knowledge fortress, barely even peeking over the top of the laptop screen when Sam snaps off the lamp and climbs into bed.

But at 3:22 in the morning there's a body curling into his over the covers, a hand on his jaw. He feels Lucifer's nose dig into his neck and he thinks he mumbles, "Ow stop it," while pulling his hands from the sheets and tugging him closer. On contact, the buzz of Lucifer's grace pushing at his skin is mild, contented, reminds him how sleepy he is. So he drops right back off until his phone alarm wakes him in the morning.

Lucifer reaches back and snatches it, drops the phone on his chest for him to turn it off. He bumps his chin into Sam's shoulder and props himself up, blinking around like he'd actually been asleep, too.

Sam doesn't feel like being awake. He reaches up, grabs a handful of blond hair and tugs Lucifer down again.

He huffs out a breath. "Pushy."

"Gimme another half hour."

Sam feels Lucifer's hand skim up the side of his face. He draws two fingers up to Sam's forehead and offers, "I can put you back to sleep."

"Nah."

"Thirty minutes, then." And Lucifer falls silent, presses back in against Sam's body.

Sam keeps his eyes closed in the drowsy quiet and the growing light. He doesn't fall back to sleep but it's alright. He just rests there and feels for the hum along his skin where it presses to Lucifer's. He can't quite detect it most times. He wonders why.

He grips Lucifer's shoulder harder, digs his fingers in a little. Pressing closer doesn't make a difference. He can't feel his soul to send it pushing up any further, either. So after a few more minutes he cracks open his eyes a bit and presses his hand to Lucifer's arm where it rests atop his midsection.

"You can't make it glow?"

Lucifer adjusts so he's looking down at Sam's hand, too. He inhales and exhales once and there it is. The glow is subtle, but visible.

"I still can't feel it, though," Sam mumbles aloud without quite meaning to.

"You don't want to do that," Lucifer cautions. "It could get too loud."

"Can you hear what I'm thinking?"

"Not without trying to. I'd have to intentionally go digging for your thoughts. I didn't think you'd want me to do that."

"Yeah. I mean, no, I don't."

"Go back to sleep, Sam."

"Nah, it's alright. I just don't--"

Lucifer waits patiently, but Sam never finishes the sentence. He doesn't prompt him. Which is good. Because Sam doesn't want to say that he doesn't want to leave the bed right now. He's content to be pressed here, under the sheets, by another body. One that cools all the excess heat in him and sometimes feels connected in a way he can't quite put into words.

He closes his eyes again and looks for it. In the pads of his fingers and the flat of his palm. He sweeps his fingers where they lay a little bit but nothing changes. He tries to feel from one end of his arms to the other. Moves both his index fingers at the same time. Nothing interrupts the commands he sends to his own body; nothing feels like it's peeking in on the process, either. He wants _something_. Even a static shock between them, or a purred hum of contentment rumbling from one body to the next.

Sam pushes his hand up over Lucifer's sleeve, past his shoulder and up to his bare neck.

Sam sweeps his thumb over Lucifer's pulse and he sighs. 

"Just _some_ ," he says. And Sam doesn't know what he means until the connection opens up and he feels it.

It's like someone opened the door and breezed in. He remembers when Meg had been in him and the few moments she hadn't properly restrained him or drowned him out. When all her demonic glee was suffocating him in the corner of his own mind but he was conscious of parts of it. Meg sending out wave after wave of commands and information to his limbs in a process he'd never sat back and witnessed in his own skin before.

Only, instead of being shoved in the corner and stifled, he just feels someone else stand there and take up all the room where the fourth wall belongs and watch him from the inside.

Oh. Hi.

He _feels_ Lucifer cock an eyebrow. "Good morning," he says out loud. Too loud. Sam wasn't prepared to have to hear the words with his ears. His fingers dig in where he touches him.

Sam's eyes are open. He closes them and looks for an image, tries to attach a form to the presence. It doesn't work, so he tries to assign it Nick's body. It still doesn't work. He tries to put wings on some shapeless form of his own imagining. That doesn't work, either. The only association that his mind can settle on is sort of a negative-color image of the only grace he's seen, that of an angel flaring out of a vessel. Instead of a burst of sunlight, though, he thinks of Lucifer as the violent burst of a vacuum seal.

Lucifer makes a curious noise into Sam's shoulder, sharing the image.

 _Or you could just show me_ , he thinks, which may be one of the most unintentionally dangerous thoughts ever.

Lucifer didn't leave a clear impression of himself when he left Nick the first time to enter Sam in Detroit. There was that glow, that sound, but as it was aimed at him, he was too overwhelmed at the time, demon blood thrumming in him, scared out of his mind, preparing for it to be over, wanting Dean not to die in the deal. He just doesn't remember what it was like. Everything after was Lucifer _being_ him. _Being_ Sam because the fit was so tight.

If Lucifer hears these thoughts now, he doesn't comment upon them. He only pulls Sam's hands from their harsh grip on his arms and draws them to his head.

"Put your hands in my hair," he says, placing them.

"Why?"

Lucifer settles further down. "I like it."

So, okay. Sam sinks his fingers into Lucifer's hair and, inside of himself, is rewarded with this huge twist of pleasure. It's comforting, like sinking into the warmth of a shower on a cold morning. Only it's an impression he's being given in his head.

"Thanks," he whispers, inexplicably.

"Thank _you_ ," Lucifer replies, head pressing up into Sam's hands slightly, until he starts lightly pulling his fingers through the hair.

"So, if you're... recharging... when we touch. Isn't it stronger when you're closer? When I can feel that connection?"

"Yes."

"So, wouldn't it go faster. Um."

Lucifer is quiet and then he starts laughing at him. He raises his head after a minute to dare Sam with his eyes, like, _go ahead, say it_.

Sam just shakes his head. Drops his hands back to Lucifer's arms. He closes his eyes again and settles back into the pillows.

Lucifer chuckles one last time and rests against Sam again. "Yeah," he says. "It would go faster if we were naked," he confirms.

Sam stays silent and, thankfully, Lucifer doesn't raise his head to watch him blush like a fucking schoolgirl. But that awareness in his head is certainly watching.

"I wouldn't be opposed," he actually kind of _purrs_.

He gives Sam a few moments of denial and then adds, "You're thinking about it."

"It's fine this way," Sam says, knowing it isn't fine this way. That none of this is fine. That these thoughts are beyond wrong.

After a while Lucifer says, "That's a half hour. Are we eating?"

Sam doesn't move except to card his fingers through Lucifer's hair again.

"I have a plan," Lucifer offers with his eyes closed. "We're going to go find your friend Garth."

Sam's fingers stop. "You know where he is?"

"I did some research on him. I know what he knows. And what Abaddon wants from him. I don't know where he is. We work that part out next."

"What does Abaddon want from him?"

"You told me that Garth is connected to a network of hunters. She wants to go after them directly rather than play hide-and-seek."

"The whole time we've been hunting for her we've been finding dead hunters," Sam fills in.

"It's too convenient that he's disappeared," Lucifer says. "She's probably working her way up through to the hunters with the most connections."

Sam's fingers have stopped. "So do you think she has him already or he's just hiding that well?"

"He's hiding that well. But I can find him. And if I find him, she'll find him next."

Sam starts to untangle himself from Lucifer and the sheets. "Where are we headed?"

«»

North is where they go.

Weirdly, as they head up further, as it gets colder, so does Sam's bed. So does Lucifer.

Sam gets them a motel room with just one big bed, just the once, and after, Lucifer asks for separate beds again. He still doesn't sleep, but he keeps more to his side of the room. Perches on his own bed to watch television. Sam is suddenly waking up alone, without Lucifer having so much as wrapped a hand around his wrist in the night.

He wonders if it's because of the intensity of the hunt, or if it's because Garth will be with them soon. If maybe Lucifer is being on his best behavior.

But that's not right. Because Lucifer grumps more and more. Sam sends him to look up records while he interviews witnesses rather than subject any other unsuspecting humans to Lucifer's blunt words and impatience.

At the end of the day, in Ohio, he requests separate rooms again.

Sam pulls the keys from the ignition and slowly turns to stare at Lucifer. Lucifer pointedly refuses to look at him.

So Sam says, "No," flippant as he can and gets out of the car to head to the front office. It's a hotel tonight. Still nothing fancy, but their standards are a little higher, the room a little less drafty, in a little less disrepair. Just because he feels like it. Just because he's dealing with an archangel who's being a little shit.

Lucifer seems surprised by the outright denial because it takes him a minute more to get out of the car and follow. Sam doesn't bother to meet his eyes until he turns from the desk with their room keys. He doesn't give a copy to Lucifer. He waits until they're digging their bags out of the trunk. "You wanna hang out in the car or you want a room key?" he asks, trying to convey that he'll only offer once.

Lucifer refuses to meet his eyes but says, "I'll take a room key."

He thinks it's gonna take him more time to boil over but Sam can't even wait until the next day. After dinner, when they're storming back into the room, shaking snow off their jackets, he turns on Lucifer.

"So what crawled up your ass and died anyway? If you need help you only have to ask," Sam says, waving a hand, trying to indicate himself.

Lucifer only tosses his jacket down and narrows his eyes. "I don't need you," he says, flat. It's not a sneer like Sam expected in response. In fact, it hasn't once dissolved into Lucifer sniping at Sam. He's just being a terror to everybody else.

To Sam, he's only.  
Pulling away.

Sam takes a step back to consider for a minute. Lucifer goes to wash his face and hands and get lost in the idiot box for a while. He settles down into a half hour show before Sam slowly goes to hang their jackets up to dry in the bathroom.

And Sam leans there for a few minutes. He should get some sleep. He should lie down and rest up because they're planning on sneaking into a building in the wee hours of the morning, long after it's closed up.

Instead he goes to sit on the foot of Lucifer's bed with him.

Lucifer doesn't move over immediately, but after a measure of time -- a minute exactly -- he scoots away, widening the physical space between them.

Sam doesn't know what he expected and he doesn't know why this is happening.

He takes the remote from Lucifer.

He's gonna get the truth.

Sam clicks the tv off with one button. "Okay. So what happened?"

It's very quiet in their room. Hotels are like that, they cut off more noise than motels do. When the air isn't chugging to heat up or cool the room, it's actually quiet. The snow is on the other side of the heavy door, necessitating that everyone else bundle up away from the cold.

"Nothing has happened," Lucifer says calmly, just a little bite around the edges.

"You don't want to have to touch me anymore," Sam guesses. "You're pissed off that you need me."

"I don't _need_ you," Lucifer says so quick it's almost an interruption. "I'm healed. I'm fine. I don't need to touch you."

"So you _wanted_ to touch me, but you don't want to _want_ it," Sam seeks to clarify.

Lucifer's jaw tightens and he doesn't respond. He's not lying, but he's omitting again. It gives Sam visions of crawling up over him and sitting in his lap where Lucifer won't be able to hide his expression so well. If he had his hands pressed directly to him, he'd be able to feel the threads of the truth, too.

Instead, he says, "Tell me the truth. I'm asking you to."

And that kind of thing gets Lucifer's back up a little. He's _above_ lying. _Of course_ he'll tell the truth.

Lucifer still takes a long moment to pull together the right set of words. He looks to Sam's hands where they curve over the edge of the mattress.

"The last time I did," he shakes his hands to indicate 'touch you, ' "but you were sleeping. You were dreaming. It was vivid. So vivid that it," he motions to Sam's hands, still staring at them.

"It came across? You could see it?"

Lucifer nods once. Takes another moment before he goes on to make his point.

"You were dreaming of the demon, Ruby. We don't dream, but I understood what I was seeing was a nightmare, Sam. It was how she used you. You remember her with satisfaction sometimes, and the rest of the time with just. Horror."

Sam takes the pause to tell himself that this was clearly unexpected on Lucifer's part. It wasn't an intentional violation and it wasn't something he was looking for. And when he saw these things, he pulled away because he knew Sam would rather have the distance than have to parse through those memories in the daylight.

Sam clears his throat. To thank him. Or something.

But first, Lucifer says, "That's not my intention. I'm not using you in that way. I equated it with my behavior, but I'm not using you like Ruby did. I would not do the things a demon does, Sam. Demons were my creations, but they've got complete autonomy. They do what they will. That didn't happen under my direction."

He doesn't say it but Sam hears what he means, anyway. The way that Sam released Lucifer in the first place didn't happen by his design. If he'd had his way, Sam would have fought his way up the ranks of demon leaders and known exactly what he was heading into when releasing Lucifer from his cage. He would have welcomed it, said yes automatically, with pleasure, and as a product of his own free will.

Ruby luring Sam into killing Lilith to break the final seal had not been Lucifer's plan. If he'd had his own way, Sam would have gone into it with his eyes wide open.

This is another thing that Sam grudgingly respects. He knows, though he probably would not openly admit, that they both value clarity and the actions of free individuals above successful results. He shares the devil's opinion in this.

"I'm starting to think you respect me for having to get duped into it," he says quietly, a little amused.

Lucifer only confirms, "I do."

"Thank you for telling me," Sam decides to say.

One more nod. "I won't use your touch simply to _feel good_. It's not necessary and you aren't obligated to share that with me. I won't be invading your personal space."

But Sam can see, at once, that it's more of a hit than the cookies and sodas. More pleasurable than the sugar high. He's marginally happy and healthy and hale when he's getting fueled with sweets; he's _content_ when fueled with touch. He doesn't mind people or the circumstances so much. He can keep a hold on his carefully-bottled rage, the mass of frozen fire that sits right under his surface. Them pressing together is like catnip to Lucifer.

Sam's soul is angel dope.

"I don't think of you like Ruby," Sam says at last. "I didn't make that connection. I think you'll tell me if you need to use me for something else. So."

He holds his hand out in the air between them.

"If I'm okay with it. If I offer it. How about that? If I tell you it's just fine."

Lucifer looks calm and clear of extraneous annoyances now that the truth is out. He only looks at Sam's hand. "Shouldn't you be sleeping? I'm supposed to wake you up at two a.m."

Sam's hand falls to his knee and he nods. He gets up and heads to his bags, and then to his bed for some rest.

He still wakes up alone, but what they stumble upon that morning turns out not to be the duo of demons they'd expected. Instead, it's a whole fucking _pack_ of werewolves.

The good news is that they're closer to Garth than they'd expected. The bad news is he's keeping the company of monsters to throw the demons off his trail. And the monsters are not in the mood to be generous with anyone else but Garth, it seems, because they seriously kick Sam's ass.

The wounds and bruises are superficial. After being healed, internally, for so long, his spiritual and metaphysical wounds are unlikely to open again. So, he doesn't need Lucifer's touch to heal him. They're regular human hurts. They'll heal given time.

He doesn't feel like giving it time. He doesn't feel like letting Lucifer keep that careful no-contact space between them.

After he showers most the blood off, he sinks to sit on his bed in just his jeans. When Lucifer approaches to hand over the first-aid kit, he tosses it back toward the pile of bags by the closet. He draws Lucifer in, holds eye-contact to make sure it's okay.

He scoots back onto the bed and feels a jolt power through his center at the way Lucifer follows. His eyes don't dip away; he never pulls his hands from Sam's. His knees sink into the mattress on either side of Sam's thighs.

Sam shakes their hands apart and pulls Lucifer's shirts up and off, as if he were stripping him to make love. As if Lucifer was about to fall forward onto his lips.

Lucifer does lie down on top of him, only he presses there and stays. His back flexes under Sam's sweeping hands. Immediately, Sam can feel contentment buzz between them, an emotion not entirely his own, though knowing that he'll be healed in the morning simply from this touch, instead of aching for weeks, he does feel pretty good about himself.

He knows Lucifer is settling in, absorbing the feeling. He throws out a thought a few times and waits for a response. _Where are you? Where are you?_ Eventually there's a reply. Like a door opening slowly on squealing hinges and there's someone else floating into his space.

When it's close enough he rubs his stubbled face into Lucifer's neck. He's the one who manhandles Sam, rearranges the way their bodies settle on the bed into a more comfortable tangle.

Such a perfect temperature, so even and calm, on the edge of sleep. So comfortable against the sheets and easy pressure of their arms around one another. Sam pulls back a little before he drifts off. He sucks a light kiss over Lucifer's adam's apple, then settles back into the crook of his neck.

He sleeps with that presence in his head blocking out both the unpleasant memories of his past and abstract nightmares of unknown origin.

«»

Much as Sam wants to, he can't sleep late. They've gotta hit the road. He left his alarm on his phone for 6:30.

Lucifer reaches over him to the bedside table and grabs the phone.

"Tap or slide?" he asks.

Sam can't even blink his eyes open yet. "Tafph," he slurs.

Lucifer taps snooze. Sam drops directly back off into sleep.

When he actually opens his eyes it's to Lucifer's impatient sigh. "That's three taps, Sam."

"Fuck," he says into the skin of Lucifer's shoulder.

"Michigan," he replies.

"Yeah," Sam pulls away and sprawls flat on his back. "I'm up."

Sam stares at the ceiling. There are distant sounds of the world waking up. A clatter and then the beeping of a garbage truck backing out. Cars starting up. Pipes rattling, pushing hot water into showers throughout the building.

After a moment of blinking, there's a quiet hush again, no distinct sounds.

The springs in the bed strain a little as Lucifer pushes himself up to hover over Sam again.

His mouth goes from morning sour to bone dry in a second flat.

"You're up?"

"Yeah," croaks out of his throat. He puts his hand up on Lucifer's face, against his cheek. He tries to feel some idea or emotion being projected at him, but there's nothing there. "Yeah, I am, you can--" he pushes at Lucifer's face a little, like he can physically turn him away. "Go ahead and wash your face before I take up the bathroom."

He knows the moment his thoughts fall out of his touch and onto Lucifer's skin because, instead of following the movement of Sam's hand turning him away, Lucifer's eyes go curious and his head drops slightly as if to inspect closer.

"Sam," he says, and stretches to hold himself above him fully, a fist on either side of Sam's shoulders. His knee swings over and he's straddling him again, like last night, before Sam dropped off to sleep.

No. Before sleep.  
There was.  
Before that. A kiss.

Lucifer doesn't stare for long and Sam's hand falls and there's a jaw under his own, teeth digging gently into the muscle of his throat before sliding, nipping off, sucking a kiss, harder than what he'd delivered himself last night.

Sam doesn't move and Lucifer only breathes into the skin.

Sam's hands hover half-way to Lucifer's sides.

He decides to cup them over Lucifer's hips at about the same time as those lips skim back and another biting kiss is delivered into the juncture between neck and shoulder.

Lucifer's left leg spasms slightly when Sam digs his thumbs into the crease above his thighs. He grips hard, like he wants to pull their hips together, but Lucifer doesn't descend on him again. He just bites, pulls flesh into his mouth, laves it, makes it wet, or sucks and releases it. Moves on to a different part of skin.

Sam digs his fingers in. Lucifer doesn't make a sound, but Sam does. He starts to moan, starts to twitch his hips off the bed, seeking friction that's too far away. Then he's actually _aware_ of himself moaning and his hands get lost, don't know where to go. To skid down Lucifer's ass or climb to his shoulders or try to palm his head up so their lips can meet.

Lucifer drops back and pulls away suddenly. Sam's fingers grip once, but then let go quickly, not about to press where he's not wanted.

"Shh, shh-shh," Lucifer hushes him as he pulls back, then pins Sam's shoulders down. "Stop."

Sam stops moving entirely.

"Now tell me how," Lucifer demands.

"How...?"

"Here," his hands move down Sam's arms to grip him at each elbow. Sam returns the hold with his own hands and when he next breathes in, there's space in his head where he knows that other presence crowding in is Lucifer.

Lucifer's looking for him in his head, through the connection. Waiting to see how deep this goes or how much Sam wants. Because he's not opposed to delivering. He has always wanted to give Sam things.

That feeling shivers down through Sam's belly. He's getting really fucking hard and all he can think is if Lucifer's hips just swung forward a little they'd--

The contact is perfect. It's also not wholly physical. He's being pinned to the bed now, but in his head he's being scooped up, cradled inside this thing so much bigger.

He's shouting. He doesn't know it until he blinks out of their shared thought, but he's seriously _shouting_ as every touch Lucifer bestows is a direct answer to a signal that hits Sam's mind before it even hits his body. One moment his arms are being stretched out, the wrists pinned to the bed, and the next his face is being cradled and there are knees pressing into his sides, lips on his, a hot tongue in his mouth.

He comes before he's ready for it. Comes in his boxers on an upward grind that stretches into a long, tense moment, broken only by the arms coming around him, scooping him up off the bed almost like it feels inside his mind. He shudders and his muscles ease to a slump. He is held tight and can feel an erection pressing down into him, but there's no instruction on Lucifer's part. Nothing inside of him that speaks to what he wants. A grind, a hand, rhythm, kissing, nothing.

Lucifer stays still against Sam and holds him close. Sam wants to close his eyes again.

He sighs and rolls his eyes at himself because this is the least appropriate time _ever_ to be thinking of Garth Fitzgerald IV, but he's telling himself he can't close his eyes _because of Garth_. Not only does Garth need saving, but once they have him, they can keep him around for a while. Sam can introduce the guy he's been hunting with as Lu, and for as long as Garth stays with them before they hand him off into Dean and Cas's protection, Garth can see that Lu means no harm. He's helpful and Sam trusts him.

So when Dean sees who it is, Garth will be there to buffer the reaction. Dean and Cas might not try to kill Lucifer as fast. Garth is sweet and foolish and completely convincing. Once he sees that Lu is working for their cause, he will trust him.

And Sam can keep him. Keep this, this strange compatibility and shared ease. The way that they touch each other that makes them both untense and feel good.

Garth will see that Lucifer is a different creature.

Sam's dick aches from it, but he grinds against Lucifer anyway. Other than a few involuntary twitches, he doesn't exactly respond in kind. Sam kinda gets that. Lucifer's not used to this. He clearly sat his own arousal in the backseat to deliver to Sam.

Sam believes this until Lucifer lays him back out on the bed and attacks the other side of his neck, starts sinking his teeth and his kisses into him there, too. But his hips don't move against Sam's.

He forces Lucifer's head up with both hands. "I want you," he protests. "I know what this is. I want you. Let me," he says, trying to dodge back down toward Sam's mouth.

"Okay. Alright," Sam agrees, but starts to move out from under him anyway. He pulls Lucifer off the bed with him and pulls him by the arms back towards the bathroom. Sam strips them the rest of the way and takes Lucifer into the shower with him.

Lucifer tenses under the spray when it first hits them. It's admittedly pretty funny with his hard-on bobbing there and his shoulders hunched, him wearing this expression like, _who would DARE_ , and Sam allows himself a brief, booming laugh before he crowds Lucifer into the water.

He likes the kisses, pulls Sam in close by his arms and his mouth is greedy for it, like Sam were some sugar substitute.

Sam stops them after a little while and soaps Lucifer up, head to toe, washes his hands and face for him. Sam likes the curves, the backs of his calves and his ass, a lot. He lets his hands slide where they will and then takes Lucifer's length in hand. He looks unsteady over it at first. His muscles and the feeling jerking him around until he has to grip onto Sam's shoulders for stability in the falling water lest he fall himself. But it takes him no time at all to get more comfortable, to move his hips into Sam's pulls and then no other part of him moves. Sam licks water off his own lips and Lucifer's eyes are steady, unblinking as if committing the sight of Sam touching him this way to hard copy.

When Sam moves in closer, kisses shower water into his shoulder and grips the other hand around one cheek of his ass, fingers digging in, that's when Lucifer comes. Across Sam's hand and belly and away with the water.

They're both breathing hard but looking nowhere else but at one another for a long moment after. "I know what you want," Lucifer says, because, this close, him still in that dark, empty, creaking attic Sam thinks of as his own mind, he can hardly _not_ know.

"Yeah. But we've gotta go. Work. We've still got things that need doing."

"I know," Lucifer says, and, with his head tilting slightly, "I know you know my plan for Garth."

"Yeah," Sam breathes, and kisses Lucifer, because it's the best plan they've got right now. They'll make it work. He's not leaving Dean alone forever and he's not sacrificing this important thing, this life-giving thing between him and Lucifer. He's no demon, he's not an angel, he's not an archangel, he's a species all to himself. He's different. The whole world is different. They're both just changing with the times.

Where Sam can't trust the rest of the world not to fall apart without Dean, he also can't trust the world not to keep trying to invade him without Lucifer. One thing after another has made use of Sam without his permission. This shade in his head, the thing that cradles his soul and cranks its wattage, showing how much it can glow -- Lucifer won't allow invasion. Especially now that he wants something back so steadily from Sam. Now the he wants this touch and will covet it for himself.

As he invites Lucifer to use him, he uses Lucifer to power himself to keep saving the world.


End file.
